Solana has had one of the trips at the best price this year, increasing a remarkable 665% since January. The cryptocurrency performed particularly well in the last quarter of the year, recording price gains that were virtually absent for most of the year.
This week, SOL transformed BNB to become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency and the second-largest altcoin by market cap. At this rate, ethereum's place may be next.
Solana's impressive growth
Solana's price movement this year has been nothing short of surprising and it has no intention of slowing down anytime soon. At the same time, the Solana blockchain has grown in different metrics. The growth can also be linked simultaneously to several air launches in Solana-based projects and to the Telephone from the Solana saga that distributed 30 million BONK tokens, a Solana meme coin, for every new phone owner. As a result, Solana overtook XRP in the market capitalization rankings for the first time, with the latter seeing a 1.82% price decline over a 7-day period.
Solana's native token, SOL, recently hit a yearly high of $99, helping the network also briefly surpass BNB in terms of market capitalization. According to data from Coinmarketcap, SOL's 24-hour trading volume increased more than 33% to more than $5.86 billion.
However, Solana has since undergone a price correction and is now trading at $91. On the other hand, BNB price growth has been slow this year, with the cryptocurrency only posting a 9% gain in the last 365 days.
At the time of writing, BNB is trading at $269, a decline of 22.7% from its yearly high of $348. Solana is now at odds with BNB and it is only a matter of time until it completely overtakes and claims the position of the second largest altcoin.
SOL price recovers above $93 | Source: SOLUSD on Tradingview.com
Can Solana catch up with ethereum?
The question now is whether Solana will be able to catch up with ethereum, the second largest blockchain network. While ethereum still dominates in the DeFi, nft, and smart contract space, Solana continues to take a growing share of the industry.
In particular, activity on Solana has been on par with ethereum In recent weeks, the chains are now rivaling each other in terms of DEX volume, nft volumes, active addresses, transaction counts, and stablecoin transfers. According to on-chain analytics platform Artemis, SOL's total trading volume on decentralized exchanges reached $1.5 billion in the last 24 hours, its highest level so far this year.
Source: Artemis
Solana is currently trading at $91, up 17% over the last seven days, and is on track to surpass the $100 price level again. If he ethereum-running-nodes-expensive/” rel=”nofollow”>current rate of price growth continues, we could see Solana revisit its current all-time high of $259 in the first half of 2024.
However, Solana still has a long way to go to match The effects of the ethereum network and the price. ethereum's total market capitalization currently stands at $278.3 billion, $244 billion more than Solana's $39.4 billion market capitalization.
Featured image from Analytics Insight, chart from Tradingview.com
Disclaimer: The article is provided for educational purposes only. It does not represent NewsBTC's views on whether to buy, sell or hold investments, and investing naturally carries risks. It is recommended that you conduct your own research before making any investment decisions. Use the information provided on this website at your own risk.
